


Cauchemar 1

by ccauchemar



Series: Espoir [4]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Amnesia, Dream-like text, Graphic descriptions of Body Horror, Nightmares, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-18
Updated: 2018-05-18
Packaged: 2019-05-08 13:37:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14695308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ccauchemar/pseuds/ccauchemar
Summary: Asleep or awake, nightmares are not so easily avoided, but neither are other parts of yourself.





	Cauchemar 1

Restlessness was the first sign. Laying in bed, waiting for sleep that refused to creep closer, buzzing mind garbling a demon’s memory she refused to touch. Until she controlled her breathing, in for five and out for five, forcing her muscles to relax, one by one, an almost artificially induced, but acceptable, sleep.

But at the dark, the comforting dark, barely across the narrow void between sleep and wake, did the reality of the dream begin to fold. A twist, almost, as she slid through five layers of perception and into a dreamer’s dream. Watching herself.

The bile of regret bubbled up and the thin lattice of anger unfolded itself in a sprawl up her limbs. She curled up on her knees. Grasping her head, icing the invisible wound with her grip. Until she could no more, jaw elongating like the reach of a scream from the force of her grief, teeth growing like an angler’s maw and an eye, a host of eyes, clustering on the right side of her head like ruby red caviar peeking out the side of the skull. And she clutched the ground as her back distended, one long, shadowy leg bursting forth, a lost rib, coated in mucus membrane. And others, a leg per eye, her face too far gone. Writhe on the ground, kick the smooth dirt, unreserved in the movement, waiting for the dam of her body to break. Her feet pulled long like toffee, digitigrade purple to match her clawed hands, shoulderblades spiked and limbs akimbo, gathering momentum, and she scarpered into the void of the night and a copse of trees in the haze of her fear.

“Stop!” cried Amélie, who was there, was always there but actually quite suddenly just there, now, yelling “!” in the soundless shout of a dream. Following after her other half, as trees grew up and the shadows crept, roots picking themselves up to trip and snare for distance’s sake.

_Wait, I have legs,_ thought Amélie, and began to run.

The trees crept in for the inhuman one and parted for the woman, but not quite enough, roots tripping her, once, twice, yet still she pursued.

And more suddenly than either of them expected the monster could run no further, and curled in the darkest corner of a group of trees that would not part, the deepest desaturated viridian, blue shadows on her quivering, whimpering form.

Amélie looked at the creature from her place on the forest floor. Strange whooping hoots sounded in the dark.

“It’s okay,” she said, and crawled closer. The beast huddled in its place. “It’s not your fault.”

The thing’s jaw opened, slimy tongue unfurling, whining like a kicked dog. Amélie cupped its face, lifting it into her lap.

“I know what they did to you,” she said, “I know how it hurts.”

The creature kicked and scrabbled at the ground, spines growing out like an urchin’s shield on its back, legs, long and deadly sharp between its legs. Its head did not move to disturb her tender hold, though it growled, guttural, in pain, and Amélie petted it.

“It’s been two years, my love. They cannot hurt us anymore. Look at me,” she murmured, raising its head.

It looked up at her, with the familiar left cheekbone-jawline-eye.

“They cannot hurt us.”

Seconds crept past. Breaths shuddered in violet lungs. The features withdrew like melting wax, slow, slow dripping with an acrid perfume. The ribs-come-legs retreated into their proper skeletal places, the alien feet shrunk into tattered sweatpants, to the lullaby of Amélie’s voice.

_We are together,_ she said, as the copse melted into darkness to the time of an adagio heartbeat, _and we are safe._


End file.
